a telephone call from Max over a week ago telling him of his engagement to January Calendar, and then a second telephone call from Will a couple of days ago telling him of his engagement to March Calendar!
To say he was surprised by the fact that his two friends were engaged to marry anyone, let alone two of the Calendar sisters, was an understatement.
The three men had been to school together, had worked together for years; despite relationships with numerous women over those years, Jude had always assumed that none of them would ever make the commitment to falling in love, let alone getting married. Obviously he had been wrong.
And that was something else he didn’t admit to too freely!
He stood up abruptly. ‘You asked me what I wanted a few minutes ago,’ he rasped. ‘I want exactly what Max was sent here to do before he fell in love with your sister, and that was to buy this farm!’
Her head tilted defensively. ‘And I’m sure he’s told you that it isn’t for sale!’
Jude’s eyes narrowed icily. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’
‘And?’
The challenge was evident in her voice, as was the underlying tone of resentment. Both of which were going to get him precisely nowhere, Jude realised.
He forced himself to relax slightly, his smile lightly cajoling. ‘May, surely you’ve realised, after the last few days of managing on your own here, that you just can’t do it?’
She stiffened angrily, green eyes flashing with the emotion. ‘What I can or cannot do is none of your business, Mr Marshall. And I don’t remember giving you permission to call me by my first name, either,’ she added churlishly.
He bit back the angry retort that sprang so readily to his lips, at the same time marvelling at the fact that this woman had managed to incite him to such an emotion. Usually he kept his emotions tightly under control, having found that this gave him an advantage over— Over what? His opponent, he had been going to say…
Was May Calendar really that?
Looking at her, tired from hard work and a sleepless night, her face ethereally lovely, much too slender than was healthy for her, it was difficult to think of her in that light. In fact, he was starting to feel guilty for having added to her obvious problems of the day.
Which was a highly dangerous direction for him to have taken!
‘Look, maybe this isn’t the best time for the two of us to talk,’ he dismissed lightly. ‘You’re obviously busy, and tired, and—’
‘And coming back tomorrow, when I might be neither of those things, isn’t going to change my answer one little bit,’ she assured him scathingly. ‘I’ll tell you what I first told Max, your lawyer, and then Will, your architect—this farm is not for sale!’
Jude frowned at her frustratedly. She really was the most stubborn, intransigent—
‘Certainly not to someone like you,’ she continued insultingly. ‘We don’t need a health and country club where the Hanworth Estate used to be, Mr Marshall,’ she scorned. ‘Or the eighteen-hole golf course you intend to make of this farmland!’
She had done her homework, at least, Jude acknowledged admiringly—because that was exactly what he intended doing with this land once it was his. Unless, of course, Max or Will—
No! He didn’t believe either man, no matter what his romantic connection with this family, would have betrayed the confidence he had in them. In fact, he knew that they hadn’t, had already turned down Max’s offer of resignation because of a ‘conflict of interest’, and viewed the two sets of plans Will had drawn up for this latest business venture, one including the Calendar farm, the other one not doing so.
He shrugged. ‘That’s only your personal opinion—Miss Calendar,’ he added pointedly.
She shook her head. ‘I believe, if you cared to ask around in the area, that you would find it’s the general consensus of opinion, and not just mine.’
He didn’t have time for this, Jude decided as he zipped up his jacket impatiently, better able to appreciate exactly what sort of brick wall Max and Will had come up against in their efforts to secure this farm for development. But May Calendar was going to find that he was made of much sterner stuff than either of his two friends and work colleagues, that he wasn’t so easily distracted by a helpless female—or, indeed, three of them!
‘We’ll talk about this some other time, Miss Calendar,’ he dismissed uninterestedly, pausing at the door to add, ‘It’s enough for now that we have introduced ourselves to each other.’ And that she now knew what sort of opposition she was up against.
Because Jude had no intention of giving up on his plans for the property he had already bought in this area, plans that included the Calendar sisters’ farm.
No intention whatsoever!
WELL, that was certainly a turn-up for the book, May acknowledged as she dropped down weakly onto one of the kitchen chairs after Jude Marshall’s abrupt departure.
He was the very last person she had expected to see today—or, indeed, at any other time.
Jude Marshall, and the corporation that he headed, had become something of an elusive spectre in the background of the sisters’ lives the last couple of months, ever since they had received a letter from that corporation with an offer to buy their farm. A farm that, as far as any of the Calendar sisters was concerned, had never been for sale.
That initial letter had come from America, which was why they had all assumed that Jude Marshall was American, too—and why, when he’d spoken in that precise English accent on his arrival a short time ago, May had made absolutely no connection between her unexpected visitor and the man whose very name the three sisters had all come to loathe the last two months.
Jude Marshall was a surprise in more ways than one, May acknowledged frowningly. She hadn’t expected him to be so arrogantly good-looking, for one thing, or have him moving capably about her kitchen making her a much-needed mug of coffee, for that matter!
He was also, she acknowledged less readily, completely right about the strain of running the farm on her own the last few days since her sister March had gone off to London to meet Will’s parents, and her younger sister January had telephoned from the Caribbean to say that she and Max had decided to stay on for an extra week. January had sounded so happy and carefree that May hadn’t liked to tell her youngest sister that, with March away, too, she was managing here on her own, brightly assuring January that everything was just fine here, and wishing her and Max a wonderful time.
Something she certainly wasn’t having herself!
This last few days on her own had been a learning experience, was indicative of how it would be once March and January were married and living away from the farm. Not good, May knew.
But that was still no reason to give in to Jude Marshall’s pressure to sell the farm to him, she decided with a determined straightening of her spine. Having now met the man, and seeing firsthand
